‘I’m not writing songs just to play solos to impress my guitar player friends,’ he says. “My days of trying to be the fastest gun in the West — which, at one point, I took to a level of near buffoonery — are in the past. I want the music that I’m making now to connect with people. If they can relate to a lyric or a sound or a melody and it makes them happier for three or four minutes of their day, then I’ve done my job — and that’s a job I’ll be happy doing the rest of my life.’